These are the pictures you'll never see in Nike ads or car ads or perfume ads. These are the majority of Americans, picking up their broken identities and trying to scrape together a living, a culture, an identity, a life. Most of the images we see are advertisements, trying to sell us a euphoria and prestige we could never achieve. We look around us and are disappointed, we struggle but don't measure up. These photos show us--real and valuable--just as we (...) are. (shrink)

Despite the concern with oppressive systems and practices there have been few attempts to analyse the general concept of oppression. Recently, Iris Marion Young has argued that it is not possible to analyse oppression as a unitary moral category. Rather, the term ‘oppression’ refers to several distinct structures, namely, exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. This paper rejects Young's claim and advances a general theory of oppression. Drawing insight from American chattel slavery and the situation of the German Jews (...) during the 1930's, I argue that to be oppressed is to be unjustly denied the opportunity for what I call ‘resilient autonomy’. I argue that all instances of oppression can usefully be analysed in these terms. I test my analysis against each of Young's five structures of oppression, concluding that in each case they are captured by my analysis. (shrink)

Controversy over providing financial incentives to research participants has a long history and remains an issue of contention in both current discussions about research ethics and for institutional review bodies/human research ethics committees which are charged with the responsibility of deciding whether such incentives fall within ethical guidelines. The arguments both for and against financial incentives have been well aired in the literature. A point of agreement for many is that inducement in the form of financial incentive is permissible when (...) the risk of harm to the individual is negligible in terms of degree and probability of occurrence. In the absence of harm to the individual, encouraging more people to participate in research would appear to be a good thing in so far as it will lead to statistically more robust research outcomes, which can then be translated into better healthcare and other practice. Whilst, on the face of it, this position seems highly defensible, I will explore the possibility that it is counterproductive – that is, providing individuals with financial incentives to become research participants may have the unintended outcome of reducing participation rates in some areas of research. In exploring this idea I will draw on empirical findings from the literature on crowding-out – the hypothesis that providing monetary incentives to people can backfire by overall reducing intrinsic motivation, in this instance intrinsic motivation to behave altruistically or undertake civic duties. (shrink)

This article examines the importance of the historical fall and doctrine of original sin in context of allegorical doctrines of the fall and sin. The article provides a moderate defense of a historic fall by critiquing what I shall dub Allegorical Accounts. Contemporary Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin deny that any historical fall of our human ancestors occurred. These accounts also affirm that all individuals require Christ’s atoning work for sin, freely fall into sin, and are not (...) created sinful or determined to fall into sin. I challenge the Allegorical Account. Given any Allegorical Account’s claims about the fall and original sin, I propose a set of jointly inconsistent propositions which I label as Atonement for All, Good Creation, and Time-Gap. If one assumes the Allegorical Account, any two propositions of the set will imply the falsity of the third. However, each of the three propositions is plausible. I examine possible modifications to avoid the inconsistency or conduct damage control—each of these is found wanting. Since these propositions are jointly inconsistent when one assumes an Allegorical Account, the article suggests that non-Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin may be theologically more important than recently regarded. (shrink)

The question of form and content is one of the fundamental questions of esthetics and the theory of art. However, it remains unresolved in many respects. Certain of its aspects still have not been investigated, and others have been treated only very sketchily.

Exegesis on Vātsyāyana's Nyāyabhāṣya, expounding the Nyaya School in Hindu philosophy.

This paper develops an explicit, pragmatic solution to the problem of deciding when an explanans which only approximately "covers" a desired event-explanandum E is acceptable as an adequate explanation. It shows in detail how comparisons made by the explanation's audience with the numerical value in E are what determine how closely E must be approximated for success. With the aid of several physics examples, it spells out the principles that govern these explanandum-comparisons, the conditions under which those principles hold, and (...) the audience traits that influence which comparisons they take seriously. (shrink)

“Looking for Asian America shows real people engaged in the full range of human activity. This is no small accomplishment for the photographer or his subjects. For Asian Americans it is extraordinary to be merely ordinary. To others, even if not to themselves, Asian Americans appear to be contradictions of identity—a Chinese-Yankee is a knockoff.” —Frank H. Wu, from the Foreword In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie—the only member of his family not born in (...) China—traveled with his wife Tara through nearly forty states to explore and document the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures. Looking for Asian America illustrates their rich and surprising journey across the United States. Through Huie’s eyes, keenly aware of his own Midwestern roots and perspective, we witness such images as a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., a bubble tea Valley Girl, and a Chinese theme park in Orlando. Huie’s camera captures ABCs, FOAs, and a self-described “redneck” Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken together the photographs reveal a complex portrait of the U.S. cultural landscape, and their dignified elegance invites a closer, deeper look. Accompanied by the personal reflections of both Wing and Tara Huie, the nearly one hundred spectacular photos tell a story that both mirrors and contradicts stereotypes of Asian Americans, ultimately questioning what it means to be ethnic and American in the twenty-first century. Wing Young Huie has received widespread acclaim for his works, including Lake Street USA, documenting the cultural landscape of his native Minnesota. He is a recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship and two-time recipient of the McKnight Photography Fellowship. He lives in Minneapolis. Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School and the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Anita Gonzalez teaches in the Master of Liberal Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

I will next briefly enumerate the evidence for the separate poems, beginning with the Trojan series.