Auto-Modernity after Postmodernism: Autonomy and Automation in Culture, Technology, and Education

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedThis chapter argues that in order to understand the implications of how digital youth are now using new media and technologies in unexpected and innovative ways, we have to rethink many of the cultural oppositions that have shaped the Western tradition since the start of the modern era. To be precise, we can no longer base our analysis of culture, identity, and technology on the traditional conflicts between the public and the private, the subject and the object, and the human and the machine. Moreover, the modern divide pitting the isolated individual against the impersonal realm of technological mechanization no longer seems to apply to the multiple ways young people are using new media and technologies. In fact, this chapter argues that we have moved into a new cultural period of automodernity, and a key to this cultural epoch is the combination of technological automation and human autonomy

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

Availability Of Education To Negroes In Waller County, Texas

Statement of Problem.- As Americans, we have been traditionally proud, even boastful, of our system of public education. But when the figures for illiteracy among the soldiers were given out in 1918-1919, our pride had a fall. On the basis of tests, more than one-fourth of the young men of the country were found to be illiterate. The illiterates came from all parts of the country and from all classes and groups. The World War helped us to realize some of the defects of our education and the need for greater effort - especially the need for the wider extension of knowledge throughout the democratic community. In so far, therefore, as schools are the chief educational instrument of democracy, our problem then is to determine To what extent is Education Available to the Negro in Waller County and to what degree? Purpose of Study.- The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent education is available to the Negroes of Waller County and to what degree by (l) ascertaining the ratio of scholastics to the number of schools; (2) the extent to which the school is accessible to the scholastics; and (3) the extent to which the curriculum and teaching personnel meets the demands of these scholastics. Previous Similar Studies.- Up to the present time no study has been made to determine the availability of Negro education in Waller County. A portion of the data presented here, nevertheless, has been included in a survey made by B. S. Luter in his analysis of the Hempstead Negro School Curriculum, and also the study made by H. A, Bullock showing the Availability of Public Education for Negroes in Texas Other than these two studies, so far as the writer has been able to ascertain, no other studies have been made to show the availability of education to Negroes to Waller County

Personality and self reported likelihood to rape among college males.

The psychological literature has recently pointed to the phenomenon of rape proclivity among normal males. Researchers have noted that a substantial proportion of men report a likelihood to rape. Studies in this area have focused on the situational determinants involved in individuals reporting this propensity

Introduction: Teaching Critical University Studies

This issue of Radical Teacher focuses on why we should teach courses and collaborate with students in research in Critical University Studies (CUS)— a handy label, but please take “university” is a stand-in for many kinds of post-secondary institution