I-11: Sustainable Supercorridor

Recently enacted Federal transportation legislation known as MAP-21 — Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century — has brought renewed attention to a proposed interstate corridor connecting Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Part of the much larger Interstate 11 proposal linking Mexico and Canada (otherwise known as the CANAMEX or Intermountain West Corridor), a new type of corridor has the potential to signal a break from the 1950s model of road building and the start of a new, technologically advanced and sustainably minded network of smart infrastructure. Using I-11 as a case study, the intent of this larger research effort is to explore three key ways otherwise status quo infrastructure can be transformed into innovative sustainable solutions: by intervening in the design and planning process, by transforming the existing mono-functional freeway prototype, and by evolving the freeway paradigm from an “engineering only” to a “sustainability first” model. In collaboration with partner schools along the route (University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and University of Nevada, Las Vegas), researchers and design affiliates from architecture, planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and environmental studies are coinvestigating the possibilities of transforming the proposed I-11 freeway from a limited use, auto-dominant roadway into a sustainable, multi-functional, ecologically and socio-economically focused Supercorridor. This presentation will focus on seven sites selected between Casa Grande and Nogales, Arizona and the next generation infrastructure prototype design proposals developed in the 2014 interdisciplinary urban design studio

Mahler within Mahler: allusion as quotation, self-reference, and metareference

The music of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) is ideal as a focus for discussion of the role of self-quotation within musical works. Although self-quotation is not in a technical sense the same thing as a narrow usage of self-reference, these two terms converge in the case of Mahler, through his creation of a semiotic ‘idiolect’ or vocabulary of musical signs which define his works as a single system. This contribution traces a progress from self-quotation, through a more semiotically potent kind of self-reference, to a situation in Mahler’s last completed symphony in which one can speak of metareference within the musical text. Mahler quotes constantly and copiously from other composers and his own works throughout his oeuvre. The most thoroughgoing examination of this habit to date is a 1997 article by Henry Louis de La Grange, whose observations are summarised and discussed here. The concern of this contribution is to focus on Mahler’s self-quotations, and to investigate whether these are a special case, in semiotic terms, and whether their use develops over time. The most straightforward case, in terms of sign functioning, is provided by Mahler’s First Symphony and its quotation of his own song, “Gieng heut’ Morgens über’s Feld”. This is a use of quotation to incorporate the suppressed text of the poem within the semiotic economy of the symphonic narrative. A more tangential and allusive technique is seen in the Fifth Symphony, where the relationship to pre-existing songs and their texts is more distant, and their function within the symphony is indirect and subtle, whilst remaining undeniable. Finally, the present contribution discusses the closing bars of the Ninth Symphony, hearing in them a Proustian representation of the operation of memory through Mahler’s use of fragmented units, which are self-referential within the Mahlerian idiolect. This way of composing attains a modernist, metareferential form of signification

The Archers, the Radio, Violence against Women and Changing the World at Teatime

Feminists working on Violence Against Women (VAW) have often been disappointed by the failure of law to produce profound change. Ill-informed and stereotypical views about VAW held by judges, lawyers, law enforcement officers, those in the media and the general public have undermined laws intended to tackle violence including domestic violence. As a consequence, VAW activists have sought new methods to shift the public discourse and facilitate the operation of the law. This article examines how campaigners used a highly publicised storyline on coercive control in the long running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers to circulate feminist knowledge on domestic violence. It discusses the reasons for the success of the activists on this occasion and reflects on the potential of popular culture combined with other forms of activism to embed feminist understandings of VAW and enhance the effectiveness of the law. It argues that popular culture can influence not only the legal professionals and others responsible for implementing and applying the law, but the broader public consciousness of domestic violence and VAW

Jung and Antisemitism

Paper given at History of Science, Medicine and Technology [E-seminars