Chasing Aleck: the story of a dorm

A student raised a hand in class and asked, "Why is this dorm named after Alexander Graham Bell?" On a deaf campus, this was a loaded question. Bell was an oralist, opposed to sign language. He was a eugenicist, opposed to deaf marriages. Indeed, the more I thought about it, the better this question got. Why did the school name a dormin after him? Unfortunately, I hadn't the foggiest idea. With apologies to that student, I offer this article as a belated answer.     

The Real vs the Imaginary: Sir William Chambers on the Chinese Garden

Sir William Chambers was one of the most important English architects in the eighteenth-century, but both in his day and later his international recognition was closely connected with his admiration for and promotion of Chinese art, particularly Chinese landscaping. Between 1757 and 1773, Chambers published three treatises praising the ingenious mixture of nature and art in a Chinese pleasure ground, criticizing the then influential English gardener Lancelot (Capability) Brown, and trying to goad English garden design into the direction of China. He did not achieve his purposes mainly because he mixed what he knew as genuine about the Chinese gardening art with what he fantasized about it. While recent scholarship has focused on his fantasy, this article examines what Chambers knew or imagined about Chinese landscaping, what he and his detractors were for and against, and how the fiasco of his 1772 and 1773 treatises, which he brought upon himself, nevertheless helped to usher in a new phase in the English reception of Chinese landscaping ideas.     

Peleliu 1944: The Archaeology of a South Pacific D-Day

Abstract

In September 1944, US Marines invaded the tiny Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group, held by the Japanese. It would become one of the worst battles of the Pacific War, but the struggle for Peleliu was afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness in favour of the better- known conflicts on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Tourist impact on the island, with its community of only six hundred native Palauans, poses acute issues of heritage management relating not only to the integrity of the sites but also to the hazards of unexploded ordnance that is present in massive quantities. This paper presents the preliminary results of an archaeological investigation of the best-preserved battlefield of the Pacific theatre.     

Translation And The Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn Orientalist

Despite the increasing interest in translation in the last two decades, there has been no investigation of the translation of historiography and its transformation from one language to another. This article takes as a case study the translation into French of Ibn Khaldûn, the fourteenth–century North African historian. It considers specifically the translation done by William de Slane in the context of the colonization of Algeria. The Histoire des Berbères , the French narrative of Ibn Khaldûn that relates to the history of Arabs and Berbers in the Maghreb, has become since then the source of French knowledge of North Africa. It is upon that French narrative that colonial and post–colonial historians have constructed their knowledge of North Africa, of Arabs, and of Berbers. The article shows how a portion of the writing of Ibn Khaldûn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way as to become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century. Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the article shows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an "imaginary" by transforming local knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essay reveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language to another, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a creation–in Ricoeur's words, a "restructuring of semantic fields."     

基布兹沙漠花园“共产主义的乌托邦”

受初中课文《死海不死》的影响,以色列对我而言一直是个神秘的国度。也许是因为时差,或许是过于激动,到达死海的第二天早晨,我比太阳先起床了。拉开窗帘面对大海,我静静地等着太阳从约旦一边的山后缓缓升起,一点点地照亮整个世界。其实这一天我最期待的行程,是导游Harel带我们回他的家看父母聊聊天,而他们就住在以色列的＂公社＂——基布兹（Kibbutz）。基布兹是以色列的集体农庄,这里的一切财产和生产资料为全体成员所有,成员之间是完全平等的,     

The Ecology of Command: U.S. Pacific Command and the Environment of the Pacific Rim

Abstract

Environmental ethicists speak fervently about the impact of human activity on the sustainability and survivability of Earth's community. But often these discussions fail to acknowledge one human activity more powerful and with the potential for greater destruction than any other— the United States military and its "empire of bases" encircling the globe. Military operations, both peacetime missions and contingency operations, and military installations stamp a large footprint on the earth's environment. From the atmospheric nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll to the removal of the coral reef at Diego Garcia, the environment of the Pacific Rim has been shaped by the demands of U.S. national security. This paper examines the environmental footprint of U.S. Pacific Command. Secondly, it suggests that the exigencies of U.S. military presence need to be included in discussions of environmental ethics.     

虚构的世界:明代蜀王朱椿与张三丰交游考

朱椿为明代蜀府第一代蜀王,时称贤王;而张三丰是明清时期名望颇高的道士.明清文献记载二人曾有所往来,朱椿亦称张三丰为"吾师".但关于张三丰本身就存有较大争议.通过阅读署名为蜀王朱椿和张三丰对二人交往事的记载、以及其他人对此事的记载,并将这些记载进行分析与对比,从中发现包括朱椿与张三丰所作的诗歌在内的所有相关的文献记载,在二人交往的时间、地点、互赠诗歌内容等方面都存有疑议与彼此矛盾处.从而可以得出朱椿与张三丰本是无关联的两个历史人物,却被持有不同目的的人捆绑在一起.     

梦想中的小城生活 在弗莱堡邂逅传说

<正>步行在弗莱堡是最佳的出行方式,即便在市中心也很少见到汽车。置身其中,好像有一种似曾相识的感觉:卵石路遍布城市每一个角落,路边连接了长长的充满着故事的水渠,沿街漂亮的房子——有散发着浓香气味的咖啡店、面包房,也有充满着书香气息的特色书店,即便高大的建筑,也可能是大学里     

梦想中的小城生活 在弗莱堡邂逅传说

<正>步行在弗莱堡是最佳的出行方式,即便在市中心也很少见到汽车。置身其中,好像有一种似曾相识的感觉:卵石路遍布城市每一个角落,路边连接了长长的充满着故事的水渠,沿街漂亮的房子——有散发着浓香气味的咖啡店、面包房,也有充满着书香气息的特色书店,即便高大的建筑,也可能是大学里     

Dreaming as a critical discourse of national belonging: China Dream,American Dream and world dream

This article explores the normative politics of national belonging through an analysis of the ‘China Dream’ and the ‘American Dream’. It traces how politicians and public intellectuals employ such slogans to highlight how national dreams emerge in times of crisis and involve a combination of aspirations and anxieties. It compares parallel rhetorical strategies – ‘patriotic worrying’ in China and the American Jeremiad in the US – to examine how belonging to these two nations involves a nostalgic longing for the past as a model for the future. Debates about the meaning of these national dreams highlight the tension between freedom and equality in the US, between the individual and the collective in China, and between longing for the true nation, and belonging in the actual nation for both countries. It concludes that while this quest for redemption through past models limits opportunities for critical discourse in China, the American Dream still contains much ‘promise’. The China Dream and the American Dream thus are, at the same time, 1) familiar expressions of nationalism and national belonging, and 2) ongoing self/Other coherence‐producing performances that help us to question received notions of nationalism and national belonging.     

Interest Groups,Federalism, and Water Quality in the Great Lakes: Chasing a Moving Target

Federalism often creates additional decisions for interest groups in determining how best to advocate for their policy recommendations in the legislative process. Should they focus their advocacy at the local, state, or national level of government? This article examines interest group behaviors in water quality policy in the Great Lakes region from 1960 to 2000. I evaluate the reasons for interest group decisions about which level of government to target, using historical analysis of Great Lakes water quality policy in the United States and Canada. The results of this analysis show that in many cases groups are influenced in their decision-making based on the level of government that has the greatest jurisdiction over the policy, supporting a neoinstitutional argument.