Towards The “New Rural History”: A Review Essay

The true subject of art history is the succession of innovations that have changed the practices of artists over time. This article uses a survey of illustrations in textbooks to consider not only when in their careers the greatest artists of the twentieth century made their greatest discoveries but also how quickly they made them. The results underscore the dominant position of Pablo Picasso and Cubism in twentieth-century art: Picasso alone accounts for the two best three-year periods produced by any artist, and he and Georges Braque account for three of the best five-year periods, all for the work the two young artists did in creating Cubism. Andy Warhol's innovations in pop art and Henri Matisse's development of Fauvism also rank among the century's most important breakthroughs. In general, identifying the most important short periods of artistic creativity highlights the differing methods of conceptual and experimental artists: great conceptual innovators (e.g., Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol) made their greatest discoveries abruptly, whereas great experimental innovators (e.g., Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock) made their discoveries more gradually. The finding that artists who innovate early in their lives do so suddenly, whereas those who innovate late do so more gradually, adds an important dimension to our understanding of human creativity.     

“The music never stopped”: naming businesses as a method for remembering the Grateful Dead

ABSTRACT

Memorialization on the cultural landscape is a common method of celebrating the legacy of an event or person significant to the history of geographical location. The Grateful Dead is a band that continues to define the ideals of the late-1960s San Francisco Sound through their music’s creative freedom and inclination toward experimentation. Although the original lineup of the Grateful Dead is no longer intact, the spirit of the music they created and their psychedelic appeal has been preserved on the cultural landscape. Despite differing reasons for naming their business after the band, hundreds of business owners in the United States have collectively preserved the Grateful Dead’s presence on the cultural landscape. In this paper we explore the distribution of businesses in the United States with Grateful Dead-related names, and how the presence of these business names enriches the cultural landscape with the memory of the band’s music as a product of the iconic San Francisco Sound.     

“Who Would be Mine for the Day!”: Irano-Judaic Marriage Customs in Late Antiquity

Zoroastrians of Babylonia had long lived alongside an important Jewish community whose presence in the region can be traced back to the Achaemenid period (c. 550?330 BCE). Such long coexistence should justify an interest in the examination of cultural sharing between these two religious groups of ērān?ahr; however, it is just recently that the question of the level of cultural contact between them has become a more important source of inquiry and research by scholars of Iranian history, religious studies and Late Antiquity. The exchanges between the Jews and Zoroastrians of the Sasanian period and their impact on the character of the Babylonian Talmud have been the subject of a number of recent studies, notably by Shaul Shaked, Yaakov Elman, Geoffrey Herman and Shai Segunda, among others. The aim of this article is to contribute to these efforts by exploring the roots of some distinctly Sasanian marriage customs that transcended religious lines and were shared by the rabbinic Jews and Zoroastrians of ērān?ahr.     

A Review of “Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government”

We explore the sensitivity of Congress to statements of administration policy (SAPs) and signing statements in the struggle with the executive over policy. We hypothesize that the nature and use of objections contained in these presidential communications generates additional congressional oversight. To test whether this happens, we developed a dataset with all SAPs, signing statements, and congressional oversight hearings from 1997 through 2007. The results indicate that the type and number of objections raised in presidential communications affects congressional oversight activity.     

A Review of “When Courts and Congress Collide: The Struggle for Control of America's Judicial System”

Brenner, Philip. The Limits and Possibilities of Congress. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. ix, 206. $15.95 hardbound; $8.95 softbound.

Maass, Arthur. Congress and the Common Good. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983. Pp. xi, 273. $18.95.

Dilger, Robert Jay. The Sunbelt/Snowbelt Controversy: The War Over Federal Funds. New York: New York University Press, 1982. Pp. 240. $27.50.

Kelley, Stanley Jr. Interpreting Elections. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. xv, 267. $27.50 hardbound; $8.95 softbound.

D. Roderick Kiewiet. Macroeconomics and Micropolitics. University of Chicago Press, 1983. Pp. 176 + vii. $15.00.

Perry, Michael. The Constitution, the Courts, and Human Rights: An Inquiry into the Legitimacy of Constitutional Policymaking by the Judiciary. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Pp. 288. $24.00.

Polsby, Nelson W. Consequences of Party Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. 267. $24.95 hardbound; $8.95 softbound.

Davis, James W. National Conventions in an Age of Party Reform. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983. Pp. 304. $35.00.

Smallwood, Frank. The Other Candidates: Third Parties in Presidential Elections. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1983. Pp. xiii, 317. $20.00 hardbound, $9.95 softbound.