Neoliberal precepts of the governance of academic science-deregulation; reification of markets; emphasis on competitive allocation processes have been conflated with those of performance management—if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it—into a single analytical and consequent single programmatic worldview. As applied to the United States’ system of research universities, this conflation leads to two major divergences from relationships hypothesized in the governance of science literature. (1) The governance and financial structures supporting academic science in the United States’ system of (...) higher education are sufficiently different from those found in many other OECD countries where these policies have been adopted to produce political pressures for an increase rather than a decrease in governmental control over university affairs. (2) The major impact upon academic science of performance measurement systems has come not externally from new government requirements but internally from the independent adoption of these techniques by universities, initially in the name of rational management and increasingly as devices to foster reputational enhancement. The overall thrust of the two trends in the U.S. has been less a shift as experienced elsewhere from bureaucratic to market modes of governance than the displacement of professional-collegial control by internal bureaucratic control. (shrink)

This book traces the deployment of intermedial aesthetics in the works of early twentieth-century female performers. By destabilizing medial and genre boundaries, these women created compelling and meaningful performances that negotiated turn-of-the-century American social and cultural issues.

This book investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreographing and dance performance exemplify both Truth and meaning-making within Native American epistemology, from an analytic philosophical perspective. Given that within Native American communities dance is regarded both as an integral cultural conduit and “a doorway to a powerful wisdom,” Shay Welch argues that dance and dancing can both create and communicate knowledge. She explains that dance—as a form of oral, narrative storytelling—has the power to communicate knowledge of beliefs and (...) histories, and that dance is a form of embodied narrative storytelling. Welch provides analytic clarity on how this happens, what conditions are required for it to succeed, and how dance can satisfy the relational and ethical facets of Native epistemology. (shrink)

Populism is on the rise throughout the world and it poses a challenge to democratic theory. Conventional political thought has not dealt seriously with this challenge throughout most of its history. The article takes the challenge seriously, underscoring the rise of Donald Trump as an example of populism. I argue that dominant paradigms in the study of the history of political thought and in normative, Rawlsian approaches do not elucidate populism. I argue that we need to look beyond the mainstream (...) and to comparative political thought in particular. The Latin American political theory tradition, which has been in conversation with European ideas since the dawn of the modern age, provides a model of ‘princely performative populism’ that is more useful. Drawing on a Machiavellian conception of the prince’s aesthetic relationship to the people and the centrality of populist experiences in Latin America, my model provides a novel definition of pop... (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Most research studying the corporate social performance –corporate financial performance link has utilized developed country samples. Also, this literature has generally focused on a wide variety of industries, ignoring the fact that certain sectors – such as controversial industries – have graver social and environmental issues. Hence, a gap exists in this tradition when it comes to emerging markets and controversial industries. This paper attempts to fill this void by providing preliminary evidence and insight on the matter. Based on an (...) exploration in six Latin American countries and five controversial industries, we find a negative bidirectional association between CSP and CFP. These results tend to contradict the mainstream conclusion of a positive bidirectional link, suggesting that institutional and market-level forces play a major role in shaping this relationship. (shrink)

Background Performance evaluation is vital for IRB operations. As the number of IRBs and their responsibilities in reviewing and supervising clinical research grow in China, there is a significant need to evaluate their performances. To date, little research has examined IRB performance within China. The aim of this study was to ascertain the perspectives and experiences of IRB employees and researchers to understand the current status of IRBs; compare collected results with those of other countries; and identify shortcomings to improve (...) IRB performance. Methods This study was conducted in China from October 2020 to September 2021, using an online survey with the IRB-researcher assessment tool-Chinese version. Results 757 respondents were included in the analysis and classified into IRB employees, researchers, or those who are both IRB employees and researchers. Overall, the score for an ideal IRB was significantly higher than that of an actual IRB. Compared to the US National Validation study, Chinese participants and American participants both agree and differ in their perspectives on the most and least important ideal items. Conclusion This investigation provides a benchmark of the perceived performance of actual IRBs in China. IRBs in China can be precisely adjusted by targeting identified areas of weakness to improve their performances. (shrink)

The American Sign Language Sentence Reproduction Test (ASL-SRT) requires the precise reproduction of a series of ASL sentences increasing in complexity and length. Error analyses of such tasks provides insight into working memory and scaffolding processes. Data was collected from three groups expected to differ in fluency: deaf children, deaf adults and hearing adults, all users of ASL. Quantitative (correct/incorrect recall) and qualitative error analyses were performed. Percent correct on the reproduction task supports its sensitivity to fluency as test (...) performance clearly differed across the three groups studied. A linguistic analysis of errors further documented differing strategies and bias across groups. Subjects' recall projected the affordance and constraints of deep linguistic representations to differing degrees, with subjects resorting to alternate processing strategies when they failed to recall the sentence correctly. A qualitative error analysis allows us to capture generalizations about the relationship between error pattern and the cognitive scaffolding, which governs the sentence reproduction process. Highly fluent signers and less-fluent signers share common chokepoints on particular words in sentences. However, they diverge in heuristic strategy. Fluent signers, when they make an error, tend to preserve semantic details while altering morpho-syntactic domains. They produce syntactically correct sentences with equivalent meaning to the to-be-reproduced one, but these are not verbatim reproductions of the original sentence. In contrast, less-fluent signers tend to use a more linear strategy, preserving lexical status and word ordering while omitting local inflections, and occasionally resorting to visuo-motoric imitation. Thus, whereas fluent signers readily use top-down scaffolding in their working memory, less fluent signers fail to do so. Implications for current models of working memory across spoken and signed modalities are considered. (shrink)

John Ogbu has studied minority education from a comparative perspective for over 30 years. The study reported in this book--jointly sponsored by the community and the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio--focuses on the academic performance of Black American students. Not only do these students perform less well than White students at every social class level, but also less well than immigrant minority students, including Black immigrant students. Furthermore, both middle-class Black students in suburban school districts, as well as (...) poor Black students in inner-city schools are not doing well. Ogbu's analysis draws on data from observations, formal and informal interviews, and statistical and other data. He offers strong empirical evidence to support the cross-class existence of the problem. The book is organized in four parts: *Part I provides a description of the twin problems the study addresses--the gap between Black and White students in school performance and the low academic engagement of Black students; a review of conventional explanations; an alternative perspective; and the framework for the study. *Part II is an analysis of _societal and school factors_ contributing to the problem, including race relations, Pygmalion or internalized White beliefs and expectations, levelling or tracking, the roles of teachers, counselors, and discipline. *_Community factors_--the focus of this study--are discussed in Part III. These include the educational impact of opportunity structure, collective identity, cultural and language or dialect frame of reference in schooling, peer pressures, and the role of the family. This research focus does _not_ mean exonerating the system and blaming minorities, nor does it mean neglecting school and society factors. Rather, Ogbu argues, the role of community forces should be incorporated into the discussion of the academic achievement gap by researchers, theoreticians, policymakers, educators, and minorities themselves who genuinely want to improve the academic achievement of African American children and other minorities. *In Part IV, Ogbu presents a summary of the study's findings on community forces and offers recommendations--some of which are for the school system and some for the Black community. _Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement_ is an important book for a wide range of researchers, professionals, and students, particularly in the areas of Black education, minority education, comparative and international education, sociology of education, educational anthropology, educational policy, teacher education, and applied anthropology. (shrink)

The use of certain performance-enhancing drugs (PED) is banned in sport. I discuss critically standard justifications of the ban based on arguments from two widely used criteria: fairness and harms to health. I argue that these arguments on their own are inadequate, and only make sense within a normative understanding of athletic performance and the value of sport. In the discourse over PED, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” performance has exerted significant impact. I examine whether the distinction makes sense (...) from a moral point of view. I propose an understanding of “natural” athletic performance by combining biological knowledge of training with an interpretation of the normative structure of sport. I conclude that this understanding can serve as moral justification of the PED ban and enable critical and analytically based line drawing between acceptable and nonacceptable performance-enhancing means in sport. (shrink)

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know (...) about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant. (shrink)

The present study investigates linguistic choices and strategy selection of American speakers of English, Russian native speakers, and American L2 learners of Russian in their complaints by exploring the interaction of social factors and gender. The data was elicited through an open-ended discourse completion questionnaire and an assessment questionnaire. The qualitative analysis shows significant differences between genders in the group of Russian speakers. The major finding was that Russian males were more judgmental and direct in their complaints, but (...) they were also more humorous and ironic than Russian females. Fewer differences were observed in the group of American speakers and American L2 learners of Russian. The findings indicate similar gender differences within each group and across groups in terms of strategy selection and the number of words. Some of the differences were statistically significant.The findings of the interlanguage analysis open areas for pedagogical intervention so that L2 learners better understand how to address males and females, as well as which linguistic strategies to use to minimize offense while negotiating a problem in Russian culture. (shrink)

_Asian-American Education: Historical Background and Current Realities_ fills a gap in the study of the social and historical experiences of Asians in U.S. schools. It is the first historical work to provide American readers with information about highly individual ethnic groups rather than viewing distinctly different groups as one vague, global entity such as "Asians." The people who populate each chapter are portrayed as active participants in their history rather than as passive victims of their culture. Each of (...) the twelve country-specific chapters begins with a description of the kind of education received in the home country, including how widely available it was, how equal or unequal the society was, and what were the circumstances under which the emigration of children from the country occurred. The latter part of each of these chapters deals with the education these children have received in the United States. Throughout the book, instead of dwelling on a relatively narrow range of children who perform spectacularly well, the author tries to discover the educational situation typical among average students. The order of chapters is roughly chronological in terms of when the first sizable numbers of immigrants came from a specific country. (shrink)

This article is an edited transcript of the roundtable entitled “What is Philo-Performance?” that took place in Paris on 28 June 2014, within the framework of the “Theatre, Performance, Philosophy International Conference: Crossings and Transfers in Anglo-American Thought”. The conference was organized by Julien Alliot, Flore Garcin-Marrou, Liza Kharoubi and Anna Street from the LAPS, a French research group on performance philosophy.

Culture and cognition work together dynamically every time a spectator interprets meaning during a performance. In this study, Bruce McConachie examines the biocultural basis of all performance, from its origins and the cognitive processes that facilitate it, to what keeps us coming back for more. To effect this major reorientation, McConachie works within the scientific paradigm of enaction, which explains all human activities, including performances, as the interactions of mental, bodily, and ecological networks. He goes on to use our biocultural (...) proclivity for altruism, as revealed in performance, to explore our species' gradual ethical progress on such matters as the changing norms of religious sacrifice, slavery, and LGBT rights. Along the way, the book engages with a wide range of performances, including Richard Pryor's stand-up, the film Titanic, aerialist performances, American football, and the stage and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire. (shrink)

This essay interweaves the narratives of Josephine Baker and Nora Holt in an exploration of African American women’s performance lives in jazz-age Paris. Baker landed in Paris by way of Harlem and...

More than thirty-five years after its first release in 1971, Don McLean’s “American Pie” still resonates deeply with music listeners and consumers of popular culture. In a 2001 public poll sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America, McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece was ranked number 5 among the 365 “most memorable” songs of the twentieth century. In 2002, the song was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1997, Garth brooks performed “ (...) class='Hi'>American Pie” at a concert in Central Park, and in 2000, pop icon Madonna performed her own version of “American Pie” on the soundtrack of her movie The Next Best Thing. In 1999, American Pie became the title of a popular – and irreverently comical – coming-of-age movie starring Jason Biggs (the movie American Pie was followed by American Pie 2 in 2001, American Wedding in 2003, and American Pie Present – Band Camp in 2005). Like the movie to which it lent its name, the song “American Pie” presents a coming-of-age narrative; and, also like the movie, the song appealed strongly and immediately to its contemporary audience. Three months after its release in November of 1971, the song reached the number one slot on the charts in January of 1972, and it remained in the Top 40 for a total of seventeen weeks (longer than any other single during the year of 1972). Unlike the movie, however, the song “American Pie” is highly nuanced and sophisticated, containing multiple allusions and layers of meaning which challenge and heighten our understanding of rock ’n’ roll music and the possibility of self-reflection and self-critique in popular culture. (shrink)

i Performing Psychology /i consists of essays and stage plays by and about Fred Newman, the controversial American philosopher, psychotherapist, playwright and ...

DIVA consideration of the performance of Blackness and race in general, in relation to sexuality and critiques of authenticity./div.

"American Exposures sheds light on photographs, from Arthur Mole's propagandistic 'living photographs' of American icons and symbols to the exploration of contemporary subcultural communities by the Korean-born photographer and performance ...

Literary performance in the form of expressive reading aloud was central to Greco-Roman cultural transmission; scholars have described its role both in education and in ancient scholarship. Noting parallels in the terminology, objectives, and criteria for literary performance among the Techne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax, scholia to canonical works, the Colloquia, and the scholia to the Techne, I argue that the scholia to canonical works reflect a performance culture in the Imperial period that included the ancient schoolroom, and that the (...) dynamics of literary performance in the ancient schoolroom may therefore help to solve the question of whether references to performance style and audience response in the scholia to canonical works were intended to guide real performances or, instead, they were meant simply describe an ideal performance by The Poet. I conclude that this is a false distinction for the schoolroom setting, since student performances were strongly conditioned by ideas of the historical origins of genre. (shrink)

Social Theory, Performativity and Professional Power—A Critical Analysis of Helping Professions in England Drawing from interviews and ethnographic research, evidence is provided to suggest a sense of "anxiety" and "regret" amongst state social workers and case managers working on the "front-line" within local authority social service departments. There have been a number of theoretical approaches that have attempted to ground the concept of "power" to understand organizational practice though Foucauldian insights have been most captivating in illuminating power relations and subject (...) positioning. In order to theoretically interrogate the relationship between social theory and professional power, we draw from the neo-Foucauldian work of American Social Philosopher Judith Butler—especially regarding Butler's (1990, 1993 and 1998) powerful work on "performativity" and its relationship to social work. We also attempt to examine the "distances" between the social work role and social workers narratives through an examination of notions of "anxiety" and "regret" in the face of the professionalisation of state social work. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on theories of gender performativity and on postcolonial African feminisms to develop an account of femininities in the rural context of northern Ghana. In doing this, I reflect on Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative, that is, as constituted by the reiterative power of discourse to create and also constrain that which it names. Through an analysis of the findings from my participant observation fieldwork amongst the Dagaaba community in Serekpere in north-western Ghana, I (...) demonstrate that there exists a profound resonance between the theories of performativity of gender and Dagaaba constructions of gender identities and power relations. The key assumptions of performativity theories are instructive in helping to make sense of the subtleties of gendered performance and power relations in this Dagaaba community. This article diverges from Butlerian theories of gender performativity by focusing on heteronormative marriage practices and the role they play in forming gendered identities. In this regard, it participates in acts of cultural translation – between European and North American settings and a West African milieu. Based on my analysis of the performative practices that constitute gender relations amongst the Dagaaba, I argue that femininity can be understood as forming a continuum, namely: ‘ideal woman’, ‘woman’ and ‘beyond woman’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 89-93 [Access article in PDF] Richard Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000) Performing Live can be ascribed to post-modern American pragmatism in its widest expression. The author's intention is to revalue aesthetic experience, as well as to expand its realm to the extent where such experience also encompasses areas alien to (...) traditional aesthetics (for example, popular art or the somatic arts of self-improvement), reaching "the art of living" and reclaiming life itself as performance.After the introduction, titled "Aesthetic Renewal for the Ends of Art: An Overture," the text is organized in two main parts: "Aesthetic Experience and Popular Art" and "Soma, Self, and Society." Along with its ambitious title, the book's organization and structure promise a consistency of approach and narrative that somewhat dissolves during the reading. Shusterman recognizes that the stylistic problems that arise from a compilation of articles spanning ten years, mixing newly written and revised articles, but appeals to the reader's appreciation of the "quality of the mix" (11). Despite this feature, he is a lucid and thoughtful communicator and his writing style is excellent.In order to propose new or revitalized alternatives for the ends of art, Shusterman [End Page 89] explores the crisis in traditional visions of art, pointing to the compartmentalization and lack of credibility in current artistic thought and practice. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Gianni Vattimo, and Arthur Danto provide him with the philosophical arguments accounting for the modern "exhaustion" of art. He supports a dialectical approach, both naturalistic and historicist, and builds a solid case for the possibility of alternatives in aesthetic thought and experience. He proposes two alternatives in his introduction: The two most prominent sites for today's aesthetic alternatives are clearly the mass-media popular arts and the complex cluster of disciplines devoted to bodily beauty and the art of living as expressed in today's preoccupation with aesthetic lifestyles. (7) It is unclear why these alternatives are "clearly" "the two most prominent." The author does not build a case for this assumption or for the "newness" of these alternatives. The "compilation style" mentioned above and this lack of justification for one of the most original elements in the book make this text often read as a philosophical drafting board. Keeping these characteristics in mind and also critically pondering the degrees of success in the enterprise, the reader must give Shusterman credit for taking risks while suggesting concrete examples for an experiential, holistic philosophy. In this sense, he mentions (in a different context) that "all of us [are caught] between conceptual history and futuristic speculation" (145), and he takes to heart this situation and its challenges.The first chapter in Performing Live aims to redeem or revalue the concept of aesthetic experience. For Shusterman, the loss of "felt experience" in art makes the interest in this concept utterly relevant for art's survival. He traces the lineage of this aesthetic philosophy to John Dewey, Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto. Besides focusing on these authors, his analysis revisits some of the main currents of thought in Western philosophy on the topic (for example, Plato, Hume, Kant, Dickie, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer). He concludes that a pragmatic approach to aesthetics, applying the concept of aesthetic experience directionally (as a means towards the actual experience rather than as a definable concept), can provide new paths for revitalizing art. Throughout the text this concept is also used expansively. The post-modern justification of the proposed aesthetics, by allowing the extension of aesthetic experience to embrace "the art of living," can leave the reader wondering if Shusterman has not simply turned Kierkegaard's existentialist stages to self-realization upside down.The second chapter is an open defense of popular art, carried out by contesting the main complaints found in current art criticism. Shusterman's defense is not directed to the products of popular art, but against the claim that popular art is aesthetically "worthless." His definition of "popular art... (shrink)

Choral music teachers simultaneously work toward two potentially competing goals: the quality of the musical performance and the quality of the education they provide for students. Is either goal preeminent, or can both exist in an ever-shifting balance? This paper highlights how this conundrum has existed since the emergence of North American choral music education nearly a century ago. The problem is explored as a paradox, with examples drawn from the author's personal experience. A proposed resolution supports the validity (...) of both goals, with the suggestion that teachers need to increase awareness of how their goals affect decisions concerning policy, pedagogy, and musical practice. (shrink)

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with (...) areas including critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary. (shrink)

In terms of income and wealth (and a variety of other measures), citizens of the United States are significantly less equal than their peers in Canada and Europe. In addition, American society is becoming increasingly less equal. Some theorists argue that this inequality is inefficient. Others claim that is unjust. Many Americans, however, are less concerned with the potential inefficiency and injustice of growing inequality. Distinguishing as Milton Friedman does between equality of result and equality of opportunity, many claim (...) that American inequality is greater because our social and political institutions hold individuals responsible for their decisions. There is nothing unjust about holding individuals responsible for their choices or preferences. This political philosophy builds from the popular idea that, in the words of Dennis Prager of the Heritage Foundation, “American individualism and the Judeo-Christian notion of personal accountability gave us the extraordinary nation that we built here.” At least since the publication of the Republican Party’s Contract with America, every prominent Republican (and many Democrats) has affirmed the importance of personal responsibility. The idea of personal responsibility plays a central role in debates over how to structure U.S. society. For these reasons, this paper considers a group of theories that Elizabeth Anderson labels “luck egalitarian.” These theories remain the most influential philosophical attempts to incorporate personal responsibility into a theory of justice. This essay takes as its staring point Anderson’s widely discussed criticisms for these theorists, and considers several of the best and most sustained responses to these criticisms (and related claims by Samuel Scheffler, Jonathan Wolff, and others). The goal is not to provide a summary of different luck egalitarian accounts of justice, a task others have performed admirably (Knight 2009, Knight and Stemplowska 2011). Furthermore, this paper will not attempt to decide which luck egalitarian theory best withstands these criticisms. Instead, this paper makes a philosophically and empirically informed case regarding how policy makers ought to utilize a principle that plays a prominent role in current American public policy debates: the role of personal responsibility. In order to make this case, I must weave normative and empirical analysis, and consider the ways in which social position in the status quo United States does not trace personal responsibility. From this analysis, I suggest three policy priorities for those interested in redeeming the oft-celebrated claim about American society: that an individual is responsible for her social position. This work promises to be of interest to any theorist or policy maker concerned with the practical implications of recent work in the moral and political philosophy of personal responsibility, or, really, anyone interested in making American society comparatively just. (shrink)

The professional profile of a performer does not only consist of mere music playing, but calls into question a number of variables of private and public, musical and extra-musical articulation. Performers have their own personality and inclinations; they are exposed to different forms of education and influences; they develop certain technical and stylistic abilities; they find certain repertoires more suitable than others; they confront themselves with composers and their requests/indications; they have to take into account social demands to given (...) repertoires; they also, intentionally or not, develop a public persona; finally, and particularly nowadays, they create a number of media interfaces that allow the public to access all the previously-listed features. The present article focuses on new media communication, particularly “official websites”, as one of such media interfaces (and one of the most important ones, in present-day society): the various semiotic strategies of visual, linguistic and audiovisual representation of this medium will be applied to the case of the Lithuanian pianist Andrius Žlabys. (shrink)

This study explores the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) aversion within the context of public policy, building on prior research on algorithmic aversion. I aim to establish a clear conceptual distinction between algorithms and AI in the public’s perception and develop a robust metric for assessing AI aversion. Utilizing a national survey, I employed affective imagery testing to compare Americans emotional responses towards AI, algorithms, and advanced technology. The findings reveal that AI elicits significantly more negative emotional responses than the (...) other two, indicating its unique position in public perception. I then construct the Artificial Intelligence Aversion Index (AIAI) based on responses to policy-related vignettes. Regression analyses showed a strong negative relationship between the AIAI and public support for both current and future AI applications within public policy, with aversion more pronounced towards potential future uses. These insights underscore the importance of understanding public sentiment towards AI to inform policymaking as well as helping to establish a framework by which to evaluate aversion levels. (shrink)

Pictures that are made, not taken, are the focus of this exciting collection of worksby 90 American artists who are using appropriation, computer technology, performance, and numerousother sources of inspiration to stretch the limits and expand the possibilities of photographicart.

As China and the United States strive to be the primary global leader in AI, their visions are coming into conflict. This is frequently painted as a fundamental clash of civilisations, with evidence based primarily around each country’s current political system and present geopolitical tensions. However, such a narrow view claims to extrapolate into the future from an analysis of a momentary situation, ignoring a wealth of historical factors that influence each country’s prevailing philosophy of technology and thus their overarching (...) AI strategies. In this article, we build a philosophy-of-technology-grounded framework to analyse what differences in Chinese and American AI policies exist and, on a fundamental level, why they exist. We support this with Natural Language Processing methods to provide an evidentiary basis for our analysis of policy differences. By looking at documents from three different American presidential administrations––Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden––as well as both national and local policy documents (many available only in Chinese) from China, we provide a thorough comparative analysis of policy differences. This article fills a gap in US–China AI policy comparison and constructs a framework for understanding the origin and trajectory of policy differences. By investigating what factors are informing each country’s philosophy of technology and thus their overall approach to AI policy, we argue that while significant obstacles to cooperation remain, there is room for dialogue and mutual growth. (shrink)

New scientific advances have created previously unheard of possibilities for enhancing combatants' performance. Future war fighters may be smarter, stronger, and braver than ever before. If these technologies are safe, is there any reason to reject their use? In this article, I argue that the use of enhancements is constrained by the importance of maintaining the moral responsibility of military personnel. This is crucial for two reasons: the military's ethical commitments require military personnel to be morally responsible agents, and moral (...) responsibility is necessary for integrity and the moral emotions of guilt and remorse, both of which are important for moral growth and psychological well-being. Enhancements that undermined combatants' moral responsibility would therefore undermine the military's moral standing and would harm combatants' well-being. A genuine commitment to maintaining the military's ethical standards and the well-being of combatants therefore requires a careful analysis of performance-enhancing technologies before they are implemented. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its SettingAndré LardinoisEva Stehle. Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its Setting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. xi 1 367 pp. Cloth, $39.50.Both gender and performance have been the focus of much research in Greek literature since the mid-1970s, although they usually have been studied by different sets of scholars. A quick gender analysis shows that (...) gender studies, so far, have attracted mainly female scholars (with the prominent exception of Jack Winkler), while the study of the performance contexts of early Greek literature has been dominated by men: Claude Calame, Bruno Gentili, and Wolfgang Rösler, to name but a few. Eva Stehle, for the first time, combines both approaches to present a new reading of various passages in archaic and classical Greek literature.The book consists of six chapters with an introduction and a brief conclusion. The introduction opens with six ancient reports about performances, some of which touch upon the staging or self-presentation of the performers. This self-presentation can encompass many characteristics, including the performers’ physical fitness, social status, wealth, or gender. Stehle argues that the latter was considered particularly important in antiquity and is nowadays most easily detectable, because it is reflected in the language of the texts. This gendered self-presentation of the performers in turn has to be situated within the specific context of the performance. Stehle recognizes three types of performances in early Greece to which she relates the three major genres of poetry: (1) community performances (chapters 1–3), reflected mostly in choral poetry, (2) performances by bards of hexameter poetry (chapter 4), and (3) symposia (chapter 5), where most monodic lyric together with elegy and iambos was performed. Chapter 6 is devoted to Sappho, whose love poetry, Stehle argues, “was designed to escape the tyranny of the performance culture” (323).Another important concept discussed in the introduction is that of “psychological efficacy” (19–21). This relates to the effect a performance is supposed to have on the audience, besides entertainment. In chapter 1, Stehle discusses the psychological efficacy of community poetry, which, she argues, is to renew the community and provide a unifying discourse. Community poetry is mostly, but not exclusively, choral. A chorus can function as both reflection and model of the community, which means that it can speak for or to the audience. Among the fragments Stehle treats in this chapter are Alkman fr. 1, the Swallow Song (PMG 848), the Athenian praise song for Demetrios Poliorketes, Pindar’s Paian 9, Tyrtaios’ Eunomia, Solon’s Salamis elegy, and Archilochos frr. 98–99. [End Page 633]Chapter 2 (“Women in Performance in the Community”) continues the analysis of Alkman fr. 1 and further discusses Alkman fr. 3, Pindar’s Daphnephoria (fr. 94b), Korinna fr. 655, other evidence for songs sung by parthenoi, evidence for performances by adult women (chapter 2.2), and finally a number of inscriptions with women as subjects (chapter 2.3). (Inscriptions are also discussed at the end of chapter 6.) There is, according to Stehle, something of a paradox in the representation of the community by women, who otherwise lack a public voice. This paradox is resolved in Alkman’s partheneia fragments by having the young women downplay the efficacy of their voice. The same holds true for the young women in Pindar’s Daphnephoria fragment. In Korinna fr. 655 the poem “does not limit or depreciate women’s ability to speak effectively” (103), but it is unclear if this is a choral song. Adult women staged themselves as producers of warriors and proper wives. In other words, “women performing communal poetry combined the function of providing reflection and model with a staging of their own subordinate status in the community” (113). Stehle finds in the inscriptions a more positive expression of women’s identities, which she attributes to the “self-sufficient authority” of writing (115).The male body was associated with martial strength and aggressiveness, qualities which could be displayed in armed dances like the pyrrhiche but in other contexts were problematic for addressing the community. Therefore several strategies were developed to mitigate the aggressive... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bardic Performance and Oral Tradition in HomerRuth ScodelAs homeric epic represents epic performance, song is distinct from the narrative performances of characters who are not bards. Song, despite its traditional content, does not depend on oral tradition for its transmission, and singers, although members of the audience may request or object to a particular song, do not adapt their narratives for individual audiences. Much recent Homeric scholarship, however, minimizes (...) differences between bardic and other narratives, treating Odysseus as epic poet and Demodocus or Phemius as narrators like Odysseus. This scholarship is not misguided or wrong. The epic poet identifies with his hero, and when the narrator’s point of view is close to that of Achilles or Odysseus, the distinction between character and poet may blur.1 Narratologically, there are many useful similarities between bardic and other narratives, and naturally scholars try to exploit these.2 Still, in emphasizing these aspects of Homeric poetics, we can too easily forget others. This danger is particularly strong where scholars have deliberately ignored or deconstructed the distinctions Homer maintains in order to make visible those elements in the Homeric, literary context that represent possible historical relationships among performers, their traditions, and their audiences.3 These distinctions, precisely because [End Page 171] they are fragile, define the special authority Homeric epic claims for itself, and when we too rapidly demystify them, we fail to see how the epic sees itself.To be sure, both bardic performances and other narratives, when fully successful, enchant their audiences, who listen in silence. The idealized bards of the epic are preeminently skilled at such enchantment, so that Eumaeus compares Odysseus to a bard because his tales are so enthralling (17.518–21). Odysseus is compared to a bard three times, twice by characters—Eumaeus, and Alcinous at 11.362–76—and once by the poet, at 21.406–9, when Odysseus bends the bow with the ease of a bard who strings a lyre. Thematically, the simile develops the contrast between Odysseus and bard, since the feast is about to conclude with death instead of entertainment.4 Similarly, the authority of Alcinous’ praise of Odysseus as bardlike, because not “tricky” (, 11.364), is perhaps undercut by Athena’s later praise of him as precisely the contrary, and by his many elaborate lies (13.291–92).5 In any case, although Odysseus is indeed bardlike in his narrative skill, the comparisons themselves indicate that such similarity between bards and other storytellers cannot be taken for granted.There are two important differences between bardic and other narratives. First, in the world depicted in the epic, “ordinary” narrative derives its authority either from personal experience or from human report, whereas epic performers are informed by the Muse, and do not depend on ordinary sources. This divine source for bardic knowledge results in only one significant practical difference between bardic narratives and those of less authoritative characters: the bard’s freedom to report the doings of the gods. Nonetheless, the Homeric narrator insists on it. Second, narrative outside the frame of epic performance normally either answers a request for information or serves an explicit paradigmatic function. It is occasional and specifically motivated, serving a specific communicative need within the social relationship of speaker and hearer(s). Bardic narrative, by contrast, ordinarily does not seek to manipulate its audience; it is essentially disinterested. Although the bard’s song may have special significance for the audience, or some members of the audience, on a particular occasion, the singer does not intend these effects. Audiences without a personal connection to the bard’s [End Page 172] subject simply enjoy the song, although hearers who feel personally touched may be deeply moved; in contrast, since nonbardic narrative takes place within an affective relationship, even a hearer with no connection to the events may express pity.These two distinctions are closely related. Narrative as the epic represents it may be seen as a continuum. At one extreme lie bardic performances, based on information provided by the Muses, potentially meaningful far beyond their immediate contexts, but with the details of content not specific to particular occasions, even if the subject of the song has been... (shrink)

Hasian, Condit, and Lucaites argue that there is "a need for investigating and implementing procedures that would democratize the legal system"i and that the boundaries of the law provide a fruitful site for such investigation. I would argue that one particularly relevant site to recover such procedures is American Indian law. American Indian treaties, although more so in terms of their negotiation rather than their final form, are hybrid documents, combining elements from both indigenous and Western law. Because (...) treaties exist at the boundaries between two systems of law, they are positioned not only to illuminate differences in practice but also to shed light on the balance of power between Indian nations and the U.S. government. Evidence of law's boundaries can be found, for example, in the adherence to, or abandonment of, indigenous practices of law over time. The journals of the proceedings in particular, which recorded the negotiation of the treaties, also documented cultural understandings of power, leadership, human relations, and attitudes toward the land. So if ever there were an opportunity to investigate and implement procedures leading to a more democratized legal system, this would be one. ;Traditional American Indian communication practices were not, and still are not, empty rituals or colorful customs of an exotic culture performed for the entertainment of outsiders. Neither are American Indian law practices the quaint customs of a long-gone past but living traditions still practiced today. I document this continuity in practice by investigating two sites: first, the historical journal of the proceedings from the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, and then in the contemporary rhetoric of their descendents, Anishinaabe environmental activists. Rhetorical analyses of these texts reveal not only American Indian concepts of law, peace, and kinship but also an environmental ethic, all based upon a rhetoric of responsibility rather than rights. ;Treaties may always be the primary written documents scrutinized in the courts when treaty rights are being asserted or challenged, but if we were serious about democratizing our legal system, then we would do well to implement many of the traditional communication practices rooted in our indigenous heritage. ;iMarouf Hasian, Jr., Celeste Michelle Condit, and John Louis Lucaites, "The Rhetorical Boundaries of 'the Law': A Consideration of the Rhetorical Culture of Legal Practice and the Case of the 'Separate But Equal' Doctrine," Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 , 339. (shrink)

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may (...) allow for social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

Beginning with the question of who constitutes the firm, this article seeks to explore the historical evolution of concepts such as corporate social responsibility, corporate accountability, corporate social responsiveness, corporate social performance, stakeholder theory, and corporate citizenship. In close parallel to these changes are differences in interpretation from Anglo—American and Continental European perspectives. The author defends that the ultimate reasons behind these differences are of a philosophical nature, affecting both the anthropology and the political theory dominant in each of (...) these cultures. Philosophically, anglo-american culture may be described as individualistic, legalistic, pragmatist and with an understanding of rights as freedom from state intervention. Continental European culture, on the other hand, is more community-oriented, more dependent on unwritten laws or customs, less results-driven or more appreciative of the intrinsic value of activities and with an understanding of rights as freedom to participate in social goods and decisions. In the end, a twist is introduced in the meaning of corporate citizenship: beyond referring to the firm as a citizen of the state, it now signifies and analyzes the rights and responsibilities of the different "citizens" comprising the corporate polity. This new proposal constitutes the author's normative response to the initial research query. (shrink)

ABSTRACT During the middle decades of the twentieth century, American Catholic scientists experienced a sense of crisis owing to the paucity of scientific research performed either by individual Catholics or in Catholic institutions of higher learning. In 1953 the Rev. Patrick Yancey, S.J., the chairman of the biology department at a small Jesuit college and a member of the newly created National Science Board, led efforts to establish a national organization of Catholic scientists. Subsequently known as the Albertus Magnus (...) Guild, this organization attempted both to improve Catholics’ scientific performance and to refute the widely held notion among non‐Catholic Americans that Catholicism was inherently hostile to science. By reflecting on Yancey’s career as an educator and scientist and on the history of the guild, this article seeks to deepen our understanding of twentieth‐century Catholic science education and reveal the ways in which Catholic scientists approached the issues surrounding the interaction of science and religion. (shrink)

The article examines work by contemporary American artist Kiki Smith, who proposes a future in which human and nonhuman bodily borders merge. The artist’s contribution to the more-than-human artistic entanglements is juxtaposed with Joseph Beuys’s artistic manifesto from 1974 which proposes, among other things, an attempt to get outside of the represented human towards the asignified ahuman. In Kiki’s sculpture, both human and nonhuman animals undergo constant morphogenesis, becoming hybrid forms far beyond the human-social paradigm, implying that the human (...) and nonhuman binary, due to the exchange of affective entanglements, is no longer valid in the heyday of techno-scientific development. The analyzed work shows that both human and nonhuman bodies are raw materials not separated from one another but always interconnected with the world and its ongoing material processes. Thus, the article emphasizes that it is only through the transgression of the human and nonhuman border that one can acknowledge the more ethical and political ways of cooperation needed for the appreciation of the multispecies dimension of our world and its survival. (shrink)