Research and Transfer: A Teaching Project

This paper reports on a project that grew out of observations and conversations undertaken by two faculty members at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY interested in exploring the connection between research skills and transfer knowledge. Stern and Macheski posited that if students were able to connect research acquisition skills to the transfer application process, each skill would enhance the other. The outcomes from this small cohort, while not conclusive, lead the authors to be optimistic that their approach improves both understanding of authentic research and its connection to personal goals. National conversations in recent years about the changing role of community colleges inform this inquiry

“Anti-Bodies”: Inkas and Amazonians Thinking Otherwise

My dissertation traces the life of forest materials from Amazonia into the Andes and beyond to illuminate how the Inkas of the Andean highlands (Western South America) imagined Amazonia and its inhabitants before and after Spanish colonization (c. 1400–1825 C.E.) and, conversely, how Amazonian peoples understood the Inkas and other “invaders,” including colonizing Spaniards and modern tourists. Interaction between the highlands and Amazonian lowlands has been little studied in general, with most interest focused on the realm of political relations and trade. Although the field of visual studies has largely ignored this subject, there is ample visual evidence that Amazonia played a significant role in the Inkas’ imaginary as a place of both subversion and refuge. Likewise, while there is limited Amazonian artifactual and ethnohistorical documentation from the periods in which the Inkas and later Spaniards attempted to control forest peoples, there is sufficient material to suggest a general Amazonian approach to unknown and possibly hostile others. Briefly, as will be discussed in the second half of this dissertation, the Amazonian strategy was to integrate unknown peoples into their relational cosmology. Ideally, and whenever possible, the integration was accomplished through “friend-making,” a process that intended to forestall hostility and foster mutually beneficial relationships.My study of cross-cultural exchanges between the Inkas and neighboring Amazonian peoples engages with the multi-sensorial aspects of forest materials in the form of wooden drinking vessels (keros), exquisite boxes to hold herbs and sweets (coqueras), and Amazonian textile designs (kené) by living artists to help us understand the ways the Inkas and Amazonian cultures adapted to one another, creating and reinforcing each other’s alterity across time

Emancipated from Baedeker: Wharton and Hemingway in Italy

Surveys Wharton\u27s and Hemingway\u27s experiences in Italy and their subsequent writings. Discusses their shared passion for the country\u27s preserved history and culture and the appeal of their fiction and nonfiction to American readers, inspiring celebrity tourism in the case of Hemingway with travelers eager to retrace his and his characters\u27 footsteps through Europe. Also covers the authors\u27 fears of the rise of fascism for the country\u27s future after World War I. Discusses Wharton\u27s The Glimpses of the Moon (1922), Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904), and Italian Backgrounds (1907) and Hemingway\u27s A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, and Across the River and into the Trees

“Translation, Translation, Rehearsal” in Conversation

Scott Hunter’s “Translation, Translation, Rehearsal” is a sound piece that explores issues of translation when a tarot deck is used to dictate the fate of each note for a saxophone quartet. Each translation of a tarot card, be it “the fool” or “the hermit,” manifests in a harmonic progression of rehearsals that culminate in an infinite play on what is lost, or not lost, in the act of translation. Accompanying “Translation, Translation, Rehearsal” is a brief interview between Scott Hunter, a PhD student of literature at UC Santa Cruz, and Refract editorial board member Alexandra Macheski about how tarot and music composition and the concept of rehearsal can create new and unforeseen harmonies. This interview, from June 15 to August 4, 2019 started as a face-to-face conversation in Santa Cruz, California, and then moved to written correspondence

Environment-Economy Trade-offs and Forest Environmentalism

Do forest managers view environmental problems at the local level

Environment-Economy Trade-offs and Forest Environmentalism

Do forest managers view environmental problems at the local level