"Light might possibly be requisite": Edgar Huntly, Regional History, and Historicist Criticism

Charles Brockden Brown’s celebrated novel Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799), set in the Forks of the Delaware region of Pennsylvania, has been related to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on the basis of a mistaken understanding that its action takes place during the summer of 1787. The correct date is 1785. The narrative’s connections to the local history of Indian relations, however, are systematic and profound. Its villain, the Indian crone ‘‘Old Deb,’’ is modeled after an elderly Delaware woman from Chester County, Hannah Freeman. Edgar himself is modeled in part after Edward Marshall, who walked off the measurement for the 1737 Walking Purchase land fraud. Moreover, a pivotal scene between Edgar and the traveler Weymouth is a symbolic reenactment of the midcentury treaty meetings at which the Delaware spokesman Teedyuscung sought restitution for the Walking Purchase. These claims provide an occasion to reflect on the methods of historicist criticism: how connections to history illuminate a literary work

Overcoming the Dark Side: Seeing through the spin of public relations in the news

In its current state, news literacy curriculum covers all the information types that consumers will see when they read, watch, listen to, and interact with news content. While current lessons do explain how press releases distribute information in the “promotion / publicity” neighborhood, there is much more nuance to the practice of PR that impacts information people read as ‘news’. In today’s climate of political spin cycles, it is more important than ever for news consumers to understand what public relations is and how its strategies influence news content. Because the practice of public relations is so often misunderstood and because brand management and media relations strategies, by nature, can mislead news consumers, we as news literacy educators have an opportunity – and responsibility – to shed a brighter light on the practice of public relations, its relationship with journalism, and how it influences news content so that news consumers can better recognize the influence of public relations before taking action. Further, if more news consumers demanded transparency and forthright information from PR practitioners, the ability of journalists to obtain helpful information would increase. An advanced news literacy course that focuses more specifically on public relations in the news can also help inform other much-needed advanced topics in news literacy. To build on this course, in-depth curriculums on political economies of news media, digital news media, and social media and the news can also give news consumers more context on what influences news content, including their government’s policies, the expansion of web-based content and how it impacts traditional news media, and how they (unintentionally) impact what other users are exposed to on social media

Part CM: Classical Mechanics

Includes: Review of Fundamentals; Lagrangian Formalism; A Few Simple Problems; Oscillations; From Oscillations to Waves; Rigid Body Motion; Deformations and Elasticity; Fluid Mechanics; Deterministic Chaos; A Bit More of Analytical Mechanicshttps://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/egp/1003/thumbnail.jp