The Commonweal in the heartland: Charles T. Kelly and Iowa\u27s industrial army

Decades before the 1930s, or the period most Americans refer to as the Great Depression, the United States suffered through one of the worst economic crises in national history. While not as devastating nor as prolonged as the economic disaster that affected the United States in the 1930s, the depression that gripped the nation from 1893 to 1897 forced millions out of work. The Commonweal of Christ, more commonly known as the industrial army movement of 1894, offered one solution to the nation\u27s crippling unemployment problem. Crusade founder Jacob S. Coxey planned to lead the nation\u27s unemployed and discontented into Washington, D. C., where the massive petition in boots would lobby Congress for the creation of a national public works relief system. The largest Commonweal contingent, known as Kelley\u27s Army, originated in California and spent nearly one month in Iowa during the spring of 1894. Named for its leader, Charles T. Kelley, the group marched from Council Bluffs to Des Moines and rafted down the Des Moines River before leaving the state for Missouri. While in Iowa, Kelley\u27s Army aroused a fascinating combination of apprehension, sympathy, loathing, curiosity, and fear in the Iowa populace. Unfortunately for Kelley, Coxey, and other industrial army participants, their efforts to convince Congress and the American people of the need for a federally funded work relief program ultimately failed. Despite this failure, the Commonweal movement did challenge long-held beliefs about the relationship between unemployment and the nation\u27s economic health. The crusade also generated questions and debates over traditional concepts of individual responsibility and the role of government in American society. This thesis makes several contributions to the history of the industrial army movement. Specifically, it contributes to the traditional narrative of Kelley\u27s Army and its travels in Iowa while focusing on the response by Iowans to the presence of the contingent in their state and communities. In addition, this work also provides information about army leader and activist Charles Kelley and his life after the failed industrial army movement of 1894

Shining Light on Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells have come a long way from fundamental considerations of charge carrier dynamics in organic semiconductors to devices with laboratory power conversion efficiencies exceeding 17% and first power harvesting installations. Despite this story of success, these days, the scientific community witnesses a shift of research effort to other solar concepts, leaving behind a high-potential solar technology with better applicability forecasts than ever before. Very compelling reasons still exist why organic solar cells can become the solar technology of the future that offers design versatility and enables unprecedented applications while offering the lowest energy payback times and ecologic sustainability. This perspective article highlights why organic solar cells remain a research field of the highest socioeconomic relevance, which challenges remain to be overcome in the future, and how organic solar cells can make a difference in the future energy landscape

»… an inborn architectural sense …«: Theoretisch-methodologische Überlegungen zur Performance-Analyse am Beispiel einer Aufnahme von Maria Callas

Die Tradition, der zufolge sich Werkanalyse mit Notentexten befasst – ‚Werken‘ in ihrer Gestalt als Partituren – wird mittlerweile in zahlreichen musikologischen Zusammenhängen hinterfragt. So findet die Analyse von Musik als klingender Praxis (in Bereichen wie Popularmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie seit langem etabliert) aktuell regen Zuspruch im Diskurs der sich disziplinär formierenden Interpretationsforschung/Performance Studies. Interessanter Weise lässt sich im Schrifttum zu bedeutenden Interpret*innen westlicher Kunstmusik eine quasi komplementäre Tendenz beobachten: Nicht selten verwenden Untersuchungen von Performances hochrangiger Künstlerpersönlichkeiten zur Beschreibung Begriffe, die zugleich Schlüsselkategorien der Analyse schriftlicher Notentexte darstellen (etwa solche aus dem Bereich der musikalischen Formenlehre). Diese Strategie unterstreicht indirekt die Einordnung des vermeintlich peripheren Klangereignisses als Analysegegenstand eigenen Rechts. Der Beitrag belegt diese Beobachtung an Beispielen aus der Literatur zum diskographischen Vermächtnis der Sängerin Maria Callas. Von dort ausgehend werden zunächst methodologische Grundsatzfragen thematisiert: Hat die Erschließung textanalytischer Kategorien für die Performance-Analyse lediglich metaphorische Qualität, oder birgt sie konkret-methodisches Potenzial zur Untersuchung musikalischer Aufführungen? Dass Letzteres zutrifft, wird anschließend am Beispiel einer Einspielung der Scena „O rendetemi la speme“ aus Vincenzo Bellinis Oper I Puritani durch Maria Callas (1953) gezeigt.The traditional focus of musical analysis on scores – music in its written form as notated »text« – is by now questioned in several musicological contexts. For instance, the analysis of music as sounding practice (as it is well-established e.g. in popular music research and ethnomusicology) is highly acclaimed in the realms of Interpretationsforschung/performance studies, research fields currently undergoing organization as disciplinary integrated scientific discourse formations. Interestingly, in publications on major performers of Western art music, tendencies in a virtually opposite direction can be observed. It is not uncommon that analyses of high-quality performances make use of concepts known as central categories of »musical text analysis« (e.g. features of musical Formenlehre). This strategy can be understood as emphasizing the recognition of the performative event as an object worth of analysis by its own. This article gives evidence for this by quoting publications on the discographical legacy of Maria Callas. Following these observations, basal methodological questions are considered: can the valorisation of categories traditionally located in musico-textual analysis have anything more than purely metaphorical function in the context of performance research? That it indeed offers methodological potential of great value for performance analyses is shown by investigating a recording of the scena »O rendetemi la speme« from Vincenzo Bellini‘s opera I Puritani by Maria Callas (1953)